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Sunday, September 25, 2016

vote

democracy is a funny old thing.

for most of the western world it is a
simple thing. every so often the public gets a chance to elect
representatives to govern and lead us. in the uk, for better or
worse, we live in a first past the post majority system: get more
votes than the other people and you are in. bish bosh bang. job done.

simple.

easy.

understandable.

most importantly it works.

but a bit like freedom of speech or
human rights there are those occasions when because people don't like
the result they moan and complain but that isn't what was supposed to
happen, this isn't the result we wanted can we change it?

for a time we could be smug about the
whingey scots – the nationalists promised their independence vote
would be a once in a generation vote. they lost. they waited a few
days and then showed they were liars by demanding a second
referendum.

but then we decided to call the
european union referendum. david cameron's decision to fight off the
encroaching power of ukip (which was only in the minds of nigel
farage and the editors of a few newspapers) and the usual gang of
eurosceptic nutters in the tory party called for the vote and the
brexit debate was started.

sensible money said stay.

sensible isn't always sexy.

farage had begun to make noises that if
the vote was close,say 51/52% stay 48/49% leave there should be a
second referendum. essentially saying if we don't get the result we
want we might want to do it again. (needless to say farage quietly
dropped this 'too close' argument toot sweet.)

the in campaign tended to argue the
economic good of staying in, relying partly on common sense and
economic stability to win the day. ooops.

the outers played to the hearts and
made many promises that it would quickly turn out that they knew they
were never going to keep, the biggest of these being the £350
million a week to the nhs – which is quickly turning out to be an
extra £2.49 and a packet of crisps if the nurses behave themselves.

the referendum was always couched, well
to the best of my recollection, as in or out. stay or go. leave or
remain. it was never what do you think? if you had a choice what you
like to do? give us a clue as to what you think we should do? there
was never a oh by the way your vote is just an indicator as to what
we should do, or your vote gives us the terms of the debate we'll
have in parliament and we'll let you know the outcome later.

it was always. yes/no. it was always
which side got the most won the day.

that is how our democracy works.

simple, easy, understandable.

arguments were made and we the people
had to make a choice with our collective crosses.

when the result came in as 52% leave
and 48% stay, it was a bit of a disaster.

but that is what the people voted for.

all of a sudden a whole group of people
become agitated and start claiming there were lies and that this was
just an advisory vote blah blah. they wouldn't have been saying
either if the vote had gone their way (and we can rest assured that
the brexiters would have used pretty much the same arguments if they
had lost in order to get a second vote).

one of the outcomes of exit was the
labour party went into full slow motion meltdown which managed to
combine the longest election ever with the most obvious result ever.
the reason for the vote was that some of the labour mps were not
happy with the leadership of jeremy corbyn. true he had not covered
himself with glory and at a time when the tories were at their least
impressive and still fighting over exit, corbyn seemed to be doing
the impossible and making the tories guaranteed winners of the next
general election, and possibly the one after as well.

problem was jeremy corbyn had
revitalised labour's membership – making it the biggest party in
the country, and all those new voters wanted jeremy to be leader.
they were the corbynistas.

the simple solution to it all would
have been for moderate labour supporters to put their hands in their
pockets and pay to become members in order to vote – they didn't.
they lost because the committed and engaged did, and they are the
people who are going to attended local party meetings and council
gatherings. they are the people who will use the tools and mechanisms
of democracy to turn the labour party into something that will not
get elected because the vast amount of labour voters are not
interested in something that looks and smells a little like
revolutionary socialism -if they did they could have voted for anyone
of a number of such parties in the past, and just because now some of
the members of those small parties can now pretend to be potential
labour politicians it isn't going to happen.

ironically jeremy and friends are going
to benefit from a very specific election while it seems ignoring the
wishes of a much broader and probably more representative vote. the
behind the scenes movers and shakers in labour, momentum group, are
keen to deselect members of parliament who do not agree with the new
vision of labour (red labour? nu old labour? swp labour?) and put
people that do agree in their place – of course this means going
against the wishes of the voters.

see that is the problem with democracy
it involves too many people who do not see the world in quite the
same way you do, it is why it is representative – we elect people
to make decisions on out part, and generally we choose them based on
the fact that they are most likely to agree with my point of view.

corby and co will not do the brave
thing and call lots of by-elections to see if their candidate will
triumph against the incumbents, while the sitting mp will not trigger
a by-election in order to prove they have the mandate in the local
area.

effectively this is labour out of power
for the next two elections, even if they do well in local council
elections, at the next general elections they may just be spectators.

just at the time an effective
opposition is needed is just the moment we get one that is fractured
by internal division and is potentially prepared to piss on the votes
of the wider community in order to keep sweet the new membership. odd
way to go about things.

that simple, effective thing called
democracy hasn't had the best time of it in the uk in these last few
months.